Ever Decreasing Circles

Oh what a circus, Oh what a show. It’s been a far from great week. I got up at five on Monday to work on a report before heading to Doncaster to see a client. When I got back I carried on typing (one of the less racy Carry On films). On Tuesday, with the report still unfinished I was up at 4.30. I really can’t imagine how this happened but all of the previous days work was lost. Perhaps a computer genius or eight year old boy could have found where it was. But I am neither and neither were readily available to me so after a little cry I went back to typing. At about 8.30 I discovered that some papers I needed were in the storage unit so I had to drive over there and find them.

Then Martin called. (Please begin playing the Simon Bates ‘Our Tune’ music). My Mobile, like every other one on the planet, displays the name of the caller so when I answered I said ‘Hello Martin’. He gave his full name and address just in case I knew dozens of other people with that Christian and Surname combination. He said that the builders had completely cut off his exposed joists along the entire length of his garage and when he complained to Max he said he wouldn’t stop and that Martin could watch him do it if he liked.

When I got back to Vikki’s I told Marianna who called Max who only said “I’ll call you back”. Since I had a meeting to go to she raced over there.

I wasn’t there so I can only summarise what has been relayed to me but she spent 90 minutes in discussion with Max and Martin who were largely refusing to speak to each other. Max, awkwardly, had told Martin that morning they would be lifting his tiles. He didn’t mention the joists. When Martin complained “You can’t do that”. Max said he could, it was what was agreed; ”Watch me”. During the discussions no work was being done. Roofers, carpenters and bricklayers loitered. Martin threatened to withdraw permission and Max threatened to leave our house unfinished. Marianna pleaded with him to be polite and keep Martin informed and he refused. Martin confessed that he knew they would be working on the guttering and had chosen to work at home that day for that reason. He said that Anne was in tears and he doesn’t normally get angry but was very angry. I wish I had the energy left for such a range of emotions. He kept saying that if Anne were out there engaging in the discussion she would tell you to ‘F off’. Marianna wanted to say ‘Bring her out here then’. The man’s a fool. Marianna could out punch him, or anyone, verbally but she was being restrained and diplomatic.

To prove the depth of his arseholery Martin wondered what would happen if the people who bought the house from us in the future didn’t like the first floor of the extension and wanted to remove it. WHAT?? Have you ever heard of people buying a house and saying ‘Darling, we’ve got too much room. Let’s remove a floor of the house’. He also wondered how the owners of their home, after Martin and Anne had died (possibly at my hands) would feel about the shared gutter. These are the sort of fears and thoughts that normally come from our clients. They are not reality. I’m not being paid to treat him so I’m not interested.

Max hadn’t done as we had all agreed or as he had sketched because, he said, that when he got up and looked at the roof this wouldn’t be possible. Should two psychologists have spotted that Max would turnout to be like this? I thought we’d made it clear that only 40% of this job was building and the rest was keeping Martin and Anne happy. Martin thought this was all part of a conspiracy and it had been Max’s and our intention all along to cut the joists. Of course, they weren’t cut to the degree Martin had said. The carpenter had taken about ten percent off them. He thought we must have known what was happening and what would be happening each day. Marianna said she didn’t, we don’t, we’re not builders. I don’t need to know every step of the process. I didn’t have an extension and at some point in the future there will be an extension. I don’t need to know what happens in between.

He complained that the builders hadn’t ever knocked on his door to inform him what they were doing. Marianna said ‘So, they’ve never told you what they’re doing?’. ‘Yes, they have. I go out and ask them every day, it’s just that they’ve never come and told me’. ‘Well, you’re out there as soon as they arrive’.

I forget how it all played out next. Martin wrote a very stroppy letter, threatening court action, saying that Max had breached our agreement. Max wrote a reply saying that it was Martin who had breached the agreement. On the phone to Marianna on Wednesday Martin said ‘Thank god I was there to protect Anne and the children yesterday’. From what? A carpenter cutting some joists? You being a tosser? He should meet the people I meet. He should try living their awful, abused lives and he might see that having his guttering altered is not the end of the world. When he rang she asked how he was and he said "Okay, considering that neither of us slept last night". This morning we went to the house. Pete the plumber’s dad and workmate handed over a second letter Martin had delivered to him. He wanted an itinerary of what the builders will do on different days for the whole build and detailed designs of the proposed guttering. I rang Max. We agreed that Martin wasn’t getting an itinerary but that Max would make a drawing.

It was, I think, Martin’s second letter that sent me over the edge. I am currently livid. There’s no other way to describe my mood. At the end of the day I or we will visit Martin and I will leave him in no doubt as to my current opinion of him. If it seems that I’m being unreasonable all of this involves him because he took advantage of an old man and built over the boundary. It’s as if he hit me with his car and expects me to pay to have my blood cleaned off his bonnet. We’ve spent a year pandering to and appeasing him and it’s ridiculous. I will be making it quite clear that it ends now, his mental health issues are not my concern.

Think about your troubles

Marianna declared herself to be in a state of panic about the house this morning. She feels that we are doing nothing but compromising. Martin and his guttering shrank the garage, the bizarre world of brick/half brick has shrunk the huge doors we imagined having, we can’t have the top floor windows as we wanted them or even as Basil had them and budget constraints means that there are constant compromises anyway. Max called late yesterday to say that we can’t have the dining room or front bedroom windows as we wanted them (the same as they currently are only able to open) because the panels are too big. Basil clearly left the house as it was because rules and regulations changed. We went to the house to measure the wall and gaps again. What we hadn’t realised was that the doors we want come in standard sizes and our holes were meant to be those standard sizes. Only Willy from Signal Construction was there, digging holes for drainage, so we didn’t discuss the rear wall. Pete was there. He’d been busy yesterday. Huge areas of floorboard had been lifted and pipes that had once been beneath it were piled up in the rooms. He said Max had already been there and was measuring the rear wall again. Perhaps he was having doubts. We spent an hour or so with Pete finalising where radiators will be. Marianna asks a lot of questions and says about five thousand words to every one I feel it necessary to utter. He explains things very well and I have faith he’ll keep us happy. We haven’t done anything else about the rear wall yet.

Compromiscuity

Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that I’m still gorgeous. The bad news is that we won’t be building what we thought we were. The plans were not really plans as in some firm set of instructions agreed upon by all parties. They’re more of a guideline, an artist's impression of what we’ll build. Imagine going into a restaurant and ordering chicken and the waiter brings you beef. Well, it isn’t actually beef, it’s a cow. It’s a cow dressed as a chicken. In the end you’re grateful that you got something. I think that’s how we’ll end up feeling about the house.

We were there fairly early yesterday morning but found Pete the plumber and his dad rather than anyone laying bricks from Signal Construction. Pete was going to spend the week there and wanted us to make decisions about what sort of heating system we wanted, what type of radiators and where we might want them. He has a normal haircut now rather than the moptop he was sporting months ago when I met him and since that was the only characteristic I registered I really wouldn’t have recognised him had it not been for the company logo on his shirt. Everyone we meet is wearing t-shirts or polo shirts with logos on them. You don’t get them in my profession. He’s a lovely man and was good enough to make a recommendation on the heating system so that was an easy decision. No one else seems to do that. They just tell you there are 300 to choose from but give no guidance on which would be best for you. Obviously, when whatever it is is installed and completely inefficient then they’ll tell you you chose the wrong one. We left Pete to collect some bathroom catalogues Marianna wanted to show him and find a set of plans on which we could mark where we wanted the radiators. Marianna called Max about the rear walls and he called back half an hour later. He was at the house and couldn’t see any problem with the wall. We rushed back there.

He explained that he won’t be building the house as described on the plans because that refers to metres, centimetres and millimetres. He’ll be building it in bricks. His two forms of measurement are
The Brick
and
The Half Brick
It is for that reason that our doors will be smaller than we thought/wanted them to be. I don’t know why we haven’t all adopted this form of measurement.

Q. How tall are you?
A. 16 Bricks

Q. Are we there yet daddy?
A. Nearly. Only another 190,000 bricks to go

It still wasn’t clear why the holes were smaller. Why hadn’t they made them bigger and the amount of wall smaller? We went there determined to demand that he knock it down and re-build it as we wanted it and we silenced as soon as he explained the half brick/brick issue. I recognised his negotiation technique from when he and Martin met over the guttering. He doesn’t really negotiate. He just tells you the way it is and dismisses anything you might say. You feel as if you are without knowledge on not just this but all subjects and remain silent. If only it had been Matthew. He’d have knocked it down. We then did a little tour with Max. The next task was to replace the second floor dormer roof but it’s now clear that the whole thing will need to be re-built. So, he’ll scaffold above the rear extension, rebuild the dormer and install the new windows (although they won’t be as wanted them). We also discussed insulating the top floor and the loft and a few other things which we had assumed he would be doing. He kept saying “We’ll have a look at it”. I wasn’t sure if this meant “I don’t want to do it now”, “I don’t want to do it”, “Let me work out how much more that will cost” or “I’m giving you back to Matthew. You’re a pain in the arse”.

This process is just compromise after compromise. And moving further and further away from where we originally wanted to be.